Overall, given what you know about them, do you support or oppose the proposed changes to the health care system being developed by Congress and the Obama Administration?
46% Support, 54% Oppose (chart)

Which comes closer to your point of view: Democrats in Congress are not considering Republican points of view in pushing legislation or Repubilcans in Congress are misusing the filibuster to block legislation?
46% Democrats pushing legislation, 37% Republicans misusing filibuster

From what you've heard or read, do you mostly approve or mostly disapprove of the proposed changes to the health care system under consideration in Congress?
35% Mostly Approve, 54% Mostly Disapprove (chart)

Back in January, I predicted a rash of process-based explanations of President Obama's declining political fortunes in 2010:

During the next eleven months, it will become increasingly obvious that Democrats face an unfavorable political environment and that President Obama's approval ratings are trending downward. Inside the Beltway, these outcomes will be interpreted as evidence that the Obama administration has made poor strategic choices or that the President isn't "connecting" with the American public. Hundreds of hours will be spent constructing elaborate narratives about how the character, personality, and tactics of the principals in the White House inevitably led them to their current predicament.

Within two weeks, the narratives about Obama not "connecting" arrived thanks to Scott Brown's victory in the special election for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts.

It's now been about a month since I wrote the original post. After tiring of the "not connecting" narrative, the press has now moved on to blaming Obama's advisors for his political problems. Congressional Democrats have quickly gotten on board, implausibly blaming Rahm Emanuel for not targeting more conservative Senate Republicans on health care.

Obama's staff certainly has made mistakes, but I doubt they are the principal cause of the administration's problems. As I've pointed out before, good fundamentals make political strategists look like geniuses and bad fundamentals make the same strategists look like idiots. In other words, staff performance is largely a reflection of the political fundamentals (in particular, the economy), not the cause of a president's success or failure.

Unfortunately for Obama's staff, they're under siege from all sides. The political press needs a dramatic narrative in which the President's problems are the result of failed political tactics; Democrats need a scapegoat; and Republicans want a scalp (particularly Emanuel's). If the year doesn't go well for Obama, it's likely that someone will be thrown overboard.

PS I predict Mickey Kaus is ahead of the curve on phase three, which will be to blame Obama himself for poor strategic choices.

Do you think the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting the war in Afghanistan now, or should the U.S. not be involved in Afghanistan now?
56% Right thing, 37% Shouldn't be involved

Which do you think is more important - to try 9/11 terror suspects in an open trial in civilian court so the world can see how the American system works or to try 9/11 terror suspects in military courts to better assure security of trials?
35% Civilian courts, 59% Military courts

Which do you prefer - to make sure that the 9/11 suspects receive the constitutional protections afforded in a civilian trial or to make sure that the 9/11 suspects are not eligible for all of those constitutional protections by having a military trial?
25% Receive protections, 68% Not eligible

As you may know, the accused Christmas Day attacker was advised of his right to remain silent by the FBI. Do you approve or disapprove of the accused Christmas Day attacker being advised of his right to remain silent?
52% Approve, 42% Disapprove

Federal law currently prohibits openly gay men and women from serving in the military. Do you think this law should be repealed or not?
57% Yes, 36% No

Some people say that not allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military is discrimination. Do you agree or disagree?
66% Agree, 31% Disagree

Some people say that allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military would be divisive for the troops and hurt their ability to fight effectively. Do you agree or disagree?
30% Approve, 65% Disapprove

Overall, given what you know about them, would you say you support or oppose the proposed changes to the health care system being developed by Congress and the Obama administration?
46% Support,49% Oppose (chart)

Thinking about politics: Right now, are you inclined to vote to re-elect your representative in Congress in the next election or are you inclined to look around for someone else to vote for?
36% Re-elect, 56% Look Around

Last week, Andrew Sullivan wrote of his sense that people divide into two classes with respect to sleep and general exhaustion, "those with kids under ten and the rest of us." As the father of a 5 and 7-year-old, I can both confirm that observation and extend it a little: Having kids under 10 probably also introduces a similar divide in coping with a multi-day snow in.

For those without kids, getting snowed in may offer a respite, a chance to catch up on work, reading or some other long deferred project. Being confined to your house with two small children is a different experience entirely. Fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time is a luxury I have not known in many days. So apologies for the slower pace of blogging this week.

As I write, as the view from my window shows, we are experiencing another blast of snow, featuring white-out conditions and heavy winds. So far, we have avoided interruptions in power and bandwidth, but our luck may run out given today's 40-mile-an-hour gusts. So apologies in advance if I drop off the grid altogether. Ditto for Emily, who is also working from home to post poll and chart updates. Hopefully, we will all be back to normal soon.

Was the financial crisis of 2008 a global turning point? Did it mark the earliest stage in the decline of US power? Will historians view the financial crisis and the Great Recession as the beginning of a multi-polar world?

StrategyOne explored this issue further by using its proprietary Beltway Barometer survey to track elite Washington opinions on the subject.

The data we collected over two years and across three survey waves paints a picture of Washington's elite attempting to contextualize the financial crisis and global recession.

With one in four elite Washington Democrats and Republicans believing that the financial crisis "marked the end of American international dominance," American citizens and global policy elites should pause and consider the implications.

As the table below details, StrategyOne leveraged its Beltway Barometer survey of Washington elites to gauge policy influencer sentiment on this question on three occasions:

• September, 2008
• July, 2009
• January, 2010

We asked.

Some people believe that the financial crisis of 2008 marked the end of American international dominance. Do you agree or disagree?

As you can see, at the present time one in four DC elites truly think that historians will look back on the financial crisis as marking the end of US hegemony on the world stage. They would likely point to massive deficits, sluggish growth and deterioration of the US dollar as a global reserve currency.

It is interesting to note that one in four Washington elites, those with the most to gain or lose from America's position on the world stage and those with the greatest firsthand knowledge of the situation, believe that America's influence is in decline.

Depending on one's viewpoint, this data can be startling, but for two very different reasons.

Those who acknowledge America's present difficulties, but see the country's strengths in an optimistic light are likely to be surprised that so many of the nation's capital elite view America's influence as in decline. They may view the opinion of this group as unpatriotic. They may also point out that the United States has had many bouts of doom and gloom in its history, including post-Sputnik fears of losing its science and technology lead and 1980s era concerns about Japanese competition. But, natural geographic advantages (a nation that can feed itself, good relations with its neighbors, large oceans to its east and west), a strong military, a large domestic economy, the rule of law and business innovation seem to give America significant staying power.

Those who focus on a surging Pacific Rim and an America deeply in debt, with an aging workforce and a devaluing currency are likely to be surprised that so few Washington elites see the writing on the wall. Like Martin Jacques, author of "When China Rules the World", this group views the rise of a multi-polar world as an inevitable product of economies like Brazil, China, India and others "catching up." They might ask how Washington elites are blind to this inevitable change.

And, as one might expect inside Washington, there are differences of opinion based upon party affiliation.

The Democratic Perspective:
Elite DC Democrats are modulating their thinking over time on this question. In the heat of the meltdown in 2008, with Bush as President, 39% agreed that the financial crisis marked the end of US international dominance. Now that number is 24%. The intervening variables are likely (a) the election of Barack Obama and (b) a perception that the worst economically is behind them.

The Republican Perspective:
On the other side of the aisle, elite Washington Republicans are now 13 points more likely to say that the financial crisis marked the end of US dominance. This is in line with their more pessimistic assessment of the US economy generally. It also may reflect a sour mood with President Obama now in the White House.

No matter the perspective, this is certainly one of the great questions of the age and StrategyOne will continue to track elite Washington sentiment on this question.

State of the Country (asked of all adults)
38% Right Direction, 54% Wrong Track (chart)

2012 President
44% Obama (D), 29% Palin (R), 15% Bloomberg (i)

If the 2010 election for congress were held today, would you support your current congressperson who represents your district in Washington D.C. or would you vote for someone else?
42% Current Congressperson, 44% Someone else

My column this week looks at the controversy over a series of surveys conducted by SurveyUSA for the liberal web site Firedloglake. Please click through to read the whole thing.

Lost in the attack memos and other questions raised is an important question facing nearly every telephone survey conducted in House, Senate and Gubernatorial races this year: Are we at the point where the majority of true "likely voters" under the age of 35 are out of reach of landline telephone samples? And at what point is simply "weighting up" those younger voters that pollsters can still reach inadequate to solve the problem?

The table below, produced by the Pew Research Center and based on their national surveys, shows that by 2006 their unweighted landline samples were under-representing roughly a third of adults under age 35. And that was as of three years ago, when the percentage of all adults living in landline-only households was estimated at 12%, nine percentage points lower than the most recent estimate:

Now consider the estimated growth in the cell-phone-only population over the last three years. As shown in the chart below (which comes from a report last year by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), landline-only samples are most likely to miss voters under age 35.

Now consider this additional statistic reported on Pollster.com by Mike Mokrzycki in December. On the most recent CDC report covering the first half of 2009, nearly two thirds (63.5%) of people age 25-29 live in households with either no landline phone (45.8%) or in "cell-mostly" households (17.7%), those were "all or almost all calls are received on cell phones."

So what should a pollster do if they reach so few 18-to-34-year-old voters that they make up just 1% of the likely voters sample for an election where past turnout suggests that age group should make up roughly 10% of the electorate? If the pollster believes they have under-represented younger voters, can they simply weight to correct the problem? Not if the shortfall is that extreme. In a sample with only 400 or 500 completed interviews, such a weight would multiply 4 or 5 interviews by a factor of 10. As I wrote in the column, you don't need to be a statistician to imagine how those "super respondents" might crate greater error and volatility in the results, especially those produced by cross-tabulations of demographic subgroups.

Let's remember that we are able to pick at SurveyUSA because they were willing to disclose the weighted demographics of their sample and because they opted against any such extreme weighting in this case. So rather than beat up on SurveyUSA, we might do better to ask: How many polls have we seen in recent months that involved a similarly sparse number of younger likely voters and were simply weighted up by factors of 5 or greater to conceal the shortfall? How would we know?

Finally, whatever we want to make of the Firedoglake surveys, it is important to remember that SurveyUSA has maintained an outstanding record of final-poll accuracy, especially in U.S. House elections and in hard-to-model primary elections. For House races, the company's own scorecard -- which I have no reason to doubt -- shows that their average error on the margin in polling 27 House races in 2006 (3.4) was roughly half that of all other pollsters combined (6.3). Their error rate was also significantly lower than the three most prolific public pollsters that year, Research2000 (5.5), Zogby (5.9) and RT Strategies (5.9).

So since we have picked at their work mercilessly, I want to give SurveyUSA's Jay Leve the last word and reproduce the full email he sent me last week in response to my questions about the Firedoglake surveys:

In August 2002, SurveyUSA released a poll showing US Senator Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) trailing. No survey to that point had showed Torricelli trailing. An hour after the poll was released, SurveyUSA's client, CBS-TV in Philadelphia, called SurveyUSA and said, "Put your helmets on. The DSCC is coming after you." And the DSCC did. The DSCC found a journalist willing to write the smack that the DSCC was shoveling, and the message went forth: Nothing wrong with Robert Torricelli, plenty wrong with SurveyUSA.

A few weeks later, Torricelli dropped out of the race. Other polls had the same results as SurveyUSA.

Fast forward to today: In a poll conducted in January 2010, at a time the Democrats were losing the state of Massachusetts, SurveyUSA finds an incumbent Democrat in a tight fight in New York state. The DCCC is unhappy. Partisans start shoveling smack. "Sources" start providing willing journalists with leaked memos. Nothing wrong with Democrat Tim Bishop. Plenty wrong with SurveyUSA.

The highway to high office is littered with the road kill of political operatives who find it easier to campaign against a poll than an opponent.

Lost in the hurly burly is an opportunity for real reflection. To my knowledge, there has never (ever) been a publicly released telephone poll conducted in a U.S. congressional district that included a known subset of interviews with respondents who did not have a home (aka: landline) telephone. An acknowledged limitation of SurveyUSA's work in NY-01, and a known limitation to date of all congressional district polling, is that voters who do not have a home phone are under represented. At a statewide-level (in contrast to the CD level), only one pollster in the 2009 election included a known subset of cellphone-only respondents in its sample (at extraordinary expense, because of the theoretical justification), and that pollster's results were worse than many polling firms who did not include a known subset of cell-phone-only respondents. Whether one anticipates that in 2010 young voters will turn out in record numbers of stay home in record numbers, the problem of how to count those voters is real, and right before us.